In Just 11 Hours, 'Reading Rainbow' Kickstarter Successfully Reaches Its One Million Dollar Goal

A Kickstarter for the return of PBS show "Reading Rainbow" has successfully reached its one-million-dollar goal - and it only took 11 hours.

The show's former host, LeVar Burton, set out to bring "Reading Rainbow" back, this time via the internet, for a whole new generation of kids.

The goal was to raise a million bucks in 35 days. The campaign has successfully raised over $1.5 million.

The "Reading Rainbow" team posted this message to Kickstarter late Wednesday night:

Hello Everyone!

Mark here. It's 9pm on Wednesday night here in LA, and I am trying to compose our first backer update, but it's hard with all the emotion built up over the day. We're all somewhat in shock.

About an hour ago, I left LeVar on the set of PERCEPTION, where together we watched you guys make the unimaginable happen.

We shot this iPhone video for all of you, right then and there (the below is a GIF, but you can watch the full video here)

As you can see, it was an emotional moment. We all dreamed and believed we could hit $1,000,000 in the 35 days of the campaign… but never, ever did we imagine you would get us there in 11 hours.

From the bottom of our hearts: thank you.

To the 30,000+ of you who have pledged so far: there is so much we want to share with you, starting tomorrow. If you sent in questions, I promise, FAQ's are being written RIGHT NOW! (So many of you commented and wrote questions that our mail server froze. #happyproblems)

Tonight, I can tell you that, as excited as we are, there's a lot more we can still accomplish together, and that every single dollar pledged to this Kickstarter will go to the same two goals: put Reading Rainbow onto more platforms, and get Reading Rainbow into even more classrooms for free.

From all of us: thank you, thank you, thank you.

More tomorrow!

Mark & The Reading Rainbow Team